Riddell, John & Adriana Paz 2009 'La via Campesina-- Farmers North and South Confront Agribusiness'...

7/28/2019 Riddell, John & Adriana Paz 2009 'La via Campesina-- Farmers North and South Confront Agribusiness' Socialist Voi

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A Socialist Voice pamphlet $2.00

La Va CampesinaFarmers North and South

Confront Agribusiness

John RiddellandAdriana Paz


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CONTENTS

World Farmers Alliance Challenges Food Proteers

by John Riddell (Socialist Voice, May 31, 2009) .............................................. 3

Farmers Seek Defenses Against Giants of Agribusinessby John Riddell (Socialist Voice, April 3, 2008) ............................................. 12

Harvest of Injustice: Oppression of Migrant Workers on Canadian Farms

by Adriana Paz (Socialist Voice, June 22, 2008) ........................................ 20

About the Authors

John Riddell is co-editor ofSocialist Voice and a member of the Venezuela We

Are With You Coalition .

Adriane Paz is a co-founder and organizer of Justicia/Justice for Migrant

Workers-BC, a volunteer collective based in Toronto and Vancouver that strives to

promote the rights of Mexican, Caribbean, and Guatemalan workers who annually

participate in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program .

Copyright 2009 by Socialist Voice

Published by South Branch Publications.

Printed in CanadaISBN 978-1-897578-09-4

Socialist VoiceMarxist Perspectives for the 21st Century

A forum for discussion of todays struggles of the workers andoppressed from the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism, based in

Canada but international in scope.

For a free email subscription send a blank email [email protected]

www.socialistvoice.com


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World Farmers Alliance

Challenges Food Profteers

Annette Aurlie Desmarais.La Va Campesina: Globalizationand the Power of Peasants. Fernwood Publishing, 2007.

reviewed by John Riddell

The neoliberal assault that has driven labour into retreat over

the last two decades has also sparked the emergence of a peas-

ants international, La Va Campesina. Rooted in 56 countries

across ve continents, this alliance has mounted a sustainedand spirited defense of peasant cultivation, community, and

control of food production.

Annette Desmaraiss bookLa Va Campesina has given us

a probing and perceptive account of the world peasant move-

ments origins, outlook, and activities. (La Va Campesina

means Peasant Path or Peasant Way, but see Peasant or

Farmer? on page 6.)

The movement began as a response to globalization, which

Mexican peasant leader Alberto Gomez has dened as a

global offensive against the countryside against small pro-

ducers and family farmers whose existence poses a barrier to

an industrialized countryside.

Such coercive industrialization involves delinking food

production from consumption through the intrusion of agri-

business corporations that usurp different stages of produc-

tion: provision of inputs, food processing, transportation, and

marketing, Desmarais says. Industrial products replace farmer

inputs: chemicals in place of manure, hybrid seeds in place of

farmers seed stocks. Many peasants are shackled to corporate

production contracts, which, Desmarais notes, now controlabout 90% of U.S. poultry farms.

Farmers are no longer considered producers of knowl-

edge, Desmarais says, but rather as consumers of the mar-

keted wisdom of agribusiness, mere cogs in the gears of cor-

porate industry.


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Meanwhile, neoliberal trade policies have destroyed insti-

tutions and tariff barriers that provided farmers with market

leverage, leaving them isolated victims of proteering by gi-

gantic worldwide agribusiness concerns.The entire process recalls capitalisms de-skilling of in-

dustrial workers, which replaced independent skilled crafts-

men by assembly-line labourers. The logical end point would

be replacement of the family farm with factory-style capitalist

estate farming.

But this has not happened.

Peasant survival

Family farming, Desmarais reports, has remained a prominent

form of cultivation, in rich and poor countries alike. She cites

data from the U.S., where farm technology is most advanced.

There, family-owned farms made up 85% of all units in 1990s,

although a signicant proportion of them are dependent on

wage labour. There is growing evidence, she says, that smallfarms are more efcient than large corporate farms and are

more sustainable. Indeed, re-peasantization is going on

as the absolute number of peasants grows.

Farmers have survived but have been subjected to ex-

treme levels of corporate exploitation. Indeed agribusiness

has learned to take maximum advantage of small-scale farm-

ers, who carry the costs and risks of farm production but are

robbed of almost all the proceeds. Added to that is predation

by the banks, whose mortgages suck the lifeblood from farms

before ultimately destroying them.

Even harsher exploitation is imposed on agricultural work-

ers, concentrated in labour-intensive fruit and vegetable

farms.Desmarais reports National Farmers Union (NFU) ndings

that farmers in Canada earned just 0.3% return on equity in

1998, while agribusiness corporations earned 5%, 20%, 50%,

and even higher rates. Since then, the situation has worsened.

In 2004, the NFU reports, farmers in Canada could not even


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cover basic costs from their product sales.

In this context, peasants have both motivation and means

for concerted resistance. The neoliberal era has in fact seen a

revival of peasant activism, much of it coordinated by La VaCampesina. Desmarais chronicles the dramatic intervention

of Va Campesina contingents in protests at successive World

Trade Organization (WTO) gatherings. Among their achieve-

ments: After having all but disappeared over the past 25

years, agrarian reform is now back on the agenda. Moreover,

Va Campesina has succeeded in maintaining unity of mem-

ber organizations in both the richest and poorest countries of

the world.

The Va Campesina website (www.viacampesina.org) re-

ports member organizations activities in the rst four months

of this year in no less than 17 countries, nine of them in the

Global South. Among these were a series of initiatives on be-

half of the farmers and other citizens of Gaza under assault by

Israel.

The peasants alliance has gone beyond defense of mem-

bers immediate economic interests. It advocates the right of

peoples to dene their agricultural and food policy, which

it terms food sovereignty. This program defends the inter-

ests of peoples of the Global South under pressure from the

worlds richest states, while providing some key elements ofa platform to unite working people and the oppressed both as

producers and as consumers of food.

Food sovereignty embraces the principle that food is a basic

human right, demands sustainable management of natural re-

sources by those who work the land, and asserts the need for

genuine agrarian reform.

In addition to calling for food self-sufciency and strength-ening family farms, La Va Campesinas original call for food

sovereignty in 1996 included these points:

Guarantee everyone access to safe, nutritious and culturally

appropriate food in sufcient quantity and quality to sustain

a healthy life with full human dignity.


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Give landless and farming people especially women ownership and control of the land they work and return ter-

ritories to indigenous peoples.

Ensure the care and use of natural resources, especially

land, water and seeds. End dependence on chemical inputs,

on cash-crop monocultures and intensive, industrialized

Peasant or farmer?When Va Campesina was formed in 1993, Annette Desmarais tells

us, delegates from Great Britain objected that the literal translation [of

its name] Peasant Road or Peasant Way would be inappropri-ate not only because of the derogatory connotation attached to the term

peasant but also because peasants did not actually exist in the British

countryside.

The dictionary distinction between peasant and farmer is indeed

sharp. Peasants are dened as small-scale cultivators, who are coarse,

boorish, poor, and uneducated. The dictionaries politely omit an-

other connotation of the term: non-White. Farmers, by contrast, are de-

ned to include rich entrepreneurs who personally never work the soil.In the 1993 Va Campesina debate, many delegates objected to drop-

ping the term peasant. Ultimately, a compromise was found: the term

Va Campesina would not be translated into English.

Nettie Wiebe, a leader of Canadas National Farmers union and also

of Va Campesina during its rst decade, believes English-speaking

farmers must reclaim the term peasant, pointing to its origin in the

French word paysan.

If you actually look at what peasant means, it means people ofthe land, Wiebe says. Are we Canadian farmers people of the land?

Well, yes, of course. And its important to take that language back.

We too are peasants and its the land and our relationship to the land and

food production that distinguishes us.

According to Desmarais, reclaiming the meaning of peasant is per-

haps one of the Va Campesinas most important achievements.

She quotes Karen Pedersen, NFU womens president from 2002-2005,

who notes that the term farmer, too, has now become derogatory, car-rying the connotation of inefciency and obsoleteness. Well, I am a

farmer and I am a peasant, Pedersen says. Through my participation

in the Va Campesina I learned that I had much more in common with

peasants than I did with some of my agribusiness neighbours. Being a

peasant stands for the kind of agriculture and rural communities we are

striving to build.


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production.

Oppose WTO, World Bank and IMF policies that facilitate

the control of multinational corporations over agriculture.

Regulate and tax speculative capital and enforce a strictCode of Conduct on transnational corporations.

End the use of food as a weapon. Stop the displacement,

forced urbanization and repression of peasants.

Guarantee peasants and small farmers, and rural women in

particular, direct input into formulating agricultural policies

at all levels.

The end result of such policies, Desmarais believes, will be

to build and strengthen rural communities, which she views as

sites of diversity, differences, conicts, and divisions among

people engaged in the same argument about the common

things in their everyday lives. The Va Campesina model, she

states, does not entail a rejection of modernity, or of tech-

nology and trade, but insists that they must be inserted in a

model based on certain ethics and values in which culture

and social justice count for something.

La Va Campesina was born out of collaboration of farm-

ers organizations in several parts of the world, with Canadas

NFU playing a prominent role. Nettie Wiebe, based in Sas-

katchewan, was the only woman member of Va Campesinas

initial coordinating committee. She spearheaded the formationof a Womens Commission to develop womens participation

and leadership, a high priority for Va Campesina, and led this

commission until 2000.

In 2004, Va Campesina recruited an energetic Quebec com-

ponent, the Union Paysanne, dedicated to a human-scale ag-

riculture and vibrant rural communities.

Struggle for independence

For 60 years, the worlds dominant farmers organization has

been the International Federation of Agricultural Producers

(IFAP), which functions mainly as a lobbying agency within

international institutions such as United Nations afliates, the


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World Bank, and the WTO. Desmarais describes IFAP as re-

formist or conformist, and as representing the interests of

larger farmers primarily based in the industrialized countries.

The NFU has stayed outside IFAP because it simply did notrepresent the interests of smaller farmers, Desmarais says.

With the onset of capitalist globalization, IFAP despite in-

ternal divisions mostly lined up in support of trade measures

favourable to agribusiness. During the process of forming

Va Campesina, there were efforts to involve IFAP, but these

broke down over such differences. Dialogue was not pos-

sible, writes Va Campesina activist Nico Verhagen.

In Desmarais view, the very existence of the Va Campe-

sina is clear evidence that not all farmers speak with the same

voice.

Indeed, the Va Campesina experience conrms that agri-

cultural producers are divided in terms of their relationship

to agricultural production. On the one hand are owners of

large-scale operations dependent on exploiting wage labour,

and those who identify with this model. On the other hand are

working farmers utilizing mostly family labour, who are vic-

tims of corporate exploitation. The fact that the working farm-

ers now speak through their own international organization

is a historic accomplishment, going beyond what non-farm

workers presently have at their disposal.

Escaping the NGO embrace

During its formation process, Va Campesina came into con-

tact with a variety of groups from what is often termed civil

society, that is, non-governmental actors. The term embraces

everything from an indigenous Zapatista community in a Mex-

ican forest to richly funded corporate research institutions.Quoting Catherine Eschle, Desmarais notes the hierarchical

and oppressive relations that exist within civil society.

Among civil society groups, it was the NGOs (Non-Gov-

ernmental Organizations) that posed a special challenge for

the nascent Va Campesina. NGOs exist to channel contribu-


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tions from governments, corporations, and others to develop-

ment projects. They vary widely good, bad, and ugly but

mostly tend to reect the agenda of the state and corporate

agencies that provide most of the funds.In general, says Desmarais, NGOs have different aims,

purposes, interests, organizational cultures and structures,

and mechanisms for decision making and accountability than

peasant organizations. She quotes the stinging comments of

James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, who term NGOs a neo-

comprador class that is not based on property ownership

or governmental resources but derived from imperial funding

and their own capacity to control signicant popular groups.

NGOs claim to speak for those without a voice, Desmarais

notes. Unfortunately, many NGOs have not been comfortable

with what the formerly voiceless have to say and have not

learned how to keep quiet when appropriate.

For example, Wilson Campos, a Costa Rican peasant leader

and founding member of Va Campesina, commented in 1994,

We dont need all those NGOs. We farmers can speak up

for ourselves. Already too many people have been taking ad-

vantage of us, without us getting any the wiser for it.

It its formative stages, La Va Campesina endured a concert-

ed effort by an inuential NGO, the Paolo Freire Stiftung, to

take control particularly by dening the alliances purposein terms of research rather than militant action and promoting

an orientation toward large landowners. The stakes were high,

since NGOs represented the main potential funding source.

Desmarais provides a vivid account of the ensuing struggle,

which ended in a parting of the ways.

The sweeping vision of La Va Campesina includes con-

cepts that link the interests of working farmers to those of allvictims of neoliberalism. Among them:

Food as a human right. Back in 1974, a United Nations

World Food Conference proclaimed with much fanfare that

within 10 years no family will fear for its next days bread.

Since then, amid evidence that hunger is growing, world


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bodies have retreated from the 1974 pledge, in part because

of U.S. insistence that the right adequate food is merely a

goal or aspiration. In 2002, Desmarais reports, a World

Food Summit abandoned any promise of the right to food.This commitment is central to the Va Campesina program.

Down with junk food! Va Campesinas French afliate won

worldwide attention to its concept ofmalbouffe (bad grub).

Its leader, Jos Bov, won fame when he was jailed in 1999

for his role in a protest that dismantled a McDonalds outlet

then under construction in the rural town of Millau. Mal-

bouffe is food from nowhere, Bov explains, food that

has been stripped of taste, health, and cultural and geo-

graphical identity the result of the intensive exploitation

of the land to maximize yield and prot.

Land stewardship. For Va Campesina, Desmarais says,

agrarian reform means not just land distribution but a trans-

formation of agricultural systems to favour small-farm pro-

duction and marketing. Land is a good of nature and

cannot be a marketable good that can be obtained in what-

ever quantity. She quotes Joo Pedro Stdile, a leader of

Brazils landless tenants: We want an agrarian practice that

transforms farmers into guardians of the land, and a differ-

ent way of farming that ensures an ecological equilibrium.

Some Va Campesina groups, Desmarais notes, favour tak-ing land off the market and practicing the principle of so-

cial ownership of the land, whereby families who work the

land have usufruct rights (the right to use the land with-

out ownership). This system, which has shown its worth

in Cuba, provides a foundation for ecologically sound and

sustainable agriculture.

The challenge of government

Annette Desmaraiss book does not take up how farmers can

achieve a government that represents them and responds to

their demands. In this regard, her book reects the character

of Va Campesina itself, which states that it is politically plu-


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ralist and non-aligned.

Yet the great rallies against oppressive trade treaties in which

Va Campesina has participated show us how the question of

government can be addressed. Mass demonstrations like thatin Quebec City in 2001 bring together militant farmers, labour

activists, ecologists, Indigenous peoples, feminists, human

rights advocates a wide alliance of social movements.

Over the last decade, such alliances have been able to install

popular governments in several Latin American countries, es-

pecially Venezuela and Bolivia, which brought to a standstill

the plans for a hemispheric free trade treaty.

The case of Bolivia shows what peasants can achieve on

a governmental level. A militant peasant movement, one of

whose leaders was Evo Morales, gave birth to a broad peo-

ples political instrument, the IPSP by its Spanish acronym.

It now governs the country (as the MAS, or Movement To-

ward Socialism) under Moraless presidency. Victory is by no

means complete, but much has been achieved for a peasants

agenda close in conception to that of Va Campesina. More-

over, drawing on its Indigenous-peasant roots, the Bolivian

movement has now adopted a vision for social transformation,

which it terms communitarian socialism.

Annette Desmarais has provided us with a gripping ac-

count of Va Campesina. Her book can help awaken labour,socialist, feminist, and ecological activists to the importance

of farmers as allies and protagonists in the world struggle for

social justice.


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Farmers Seek Defences

Against the Giants of Agribusiness

by John Riddell

Around the world, farm income is plummeting, pushing farm-

ers off the land and into destitution. At the very same time,

soaring food prices are putting tens of millions onto starvation

diets.

Welcome to the bizarre world of capitalist agriculture, where

the drive to boost prots of giant transnational corporations isimperiling the production of our means of survival.

Suzanne Weiss and I sought insight into this crisis by talking

to farmers who live close to us in Grey County, 200 kilo-

meters north-west of Toronto. We had been invited there to re-

port on farming in Venezuela to the local unit of the National

Farmers Union. Our hosts took time to give us an education in

Grey County agricultural economics.

What is the one single measure that would do the most to

help farmers in Ontario? I asked Rae MacIntyre, president of

the Grey County local of the National Farmers Union (NFU).

Open up food markets to local producers, he replied. That

would transform the situation.

MacIntyres stress on local food reveals how much ground

has been lost by Grey Countys 160 NFU members and

their 50,000 farmer colleagues across Ontario during re-

cent decades of big-business attacks on farmers and degra-

dation of the food system. The challenge before farmers is

no longer merely low prices for farm products. They are now

almost entirely excluded from grocery-store shelves.

Check out your local supermarket: almost every food prod-uct has traveled 3,000 kilometers or more to reach the store.

Exploited producers

But more is at stake. Farmers are working people, exploited

by big-business proteering. Despite the supposed advantages


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of large-scale farming, Canada has very few capitalist factory-

farms worked by hired labour. The great majority of opera-

tions are family farms, where family members do most or

all of the work.Some working farmers employ seasonal labourers under the

governments oppressive migrant-labour programs. Defense

of these workers must be a top priority of the labour move-

ment as a whole. But the primary blame for this shameful sys-

tem falls on the government that designed it, and the capitalist

market that requires it.

Farmers are self-employed and must get by on what their

products fetch on a hostile market. Many farmers have been

subjugated by onerous contracts with giant corporate custom-

ers. They are exploited by big-business suppliers, buyers, and

banks just as workers at General Motors or Wal-Mart are.

The last two decades of cutbacks, layoffs, and concession

contracts, which wage workers know as neo-liberalism, hit

farmers with extra severity. In that time, 25% of Canadas

farms disappeared.

No more buying local

Our Grey County hosts, mostly beef and lamb producers, told

us that most of their potential corporate customers had stopped

buying from local producers, seeking to cut costs through gi-

ant contracts with foreign suppliers. Shawn, who runs a sheep

farm, had just lost his marketing contract with a grocery chain

that was cutting out local producers. Another NFU member

had lost his contract for pumpkins. The buyer told him frank-

ly: No more buying local.

Jon Radojkovic, a Grey County grower of shiitake mush-

rooms told us he has given up trying to sell them to Torontodistributors. Instead, he nds his customers through a local

bartering network.

Like most Grey County farmers, Rae MacIntyre raises beef.

Not long ago, there was a slaughterhouse in every county,

he says. Thats all gone now; the only signicant purchaser is


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the corporate goliath, Cargill, which has an abattoir in Guelph,

MacIntyre says. Most Ontario beef is sold into the U.S. for

whatever it will bring, and these days thats next to nothing.

Grey County used to be a major supplier of apples. Nowfew apples are sold, MacIntyre says. Juice apples are of-

ten composted or used for animal feed. Many of the apples

we see in stores are own in from China. The same applies to

apple juice and apple sauce, despite the misleading made in

Canada labels on the packaging.

Many good farmers have given up, says Radojkovic.

They were proud and happy; now they have lost hope

killed by low prices.

The average farm in Canada represented an investment of

$1.3 million in 2006 more per worker than in any other

industry. Yet the average farmers net market income from

this massive investment was only $13,000. And more than

two-thirds must be set aside to provide for depreciation of

buildings and equipment.

The NFU calculates that Ontario farmers` real return on their

investment dropped to zero in 1991, and has declined since to

negative $15,000 per farm in 2006.

Meanwhile, farm debt has more than doubled over the last

two decades. With income levels so low, such debts can usu-

ally be repaid only be selling the farm.Farmers try to compensate by taking off-farm jobs. Small

and mid-sized Ontario farms get 90% of their income that

way. Even farms with the highest sales get more than a quarter

of their total revenue from off-farm jobs.

Given the disastrous economic conditions, few young peo-

ple are stepping forward to replace Canadas aging farm work

force. In twenty years, the number of farmers under 35 yearsold is down 62%.

Corporate profteering

The sickness in Canadas farms is rooted in the way the pro-

ceeds of agriculture are divided between farmers and workers,


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on the one hand, and capitalist corporations on the other.

In Canadas hog industry, between 1988 and 2002, and de-

spite ination, farm-gate prices (including ination) fell 5%

from 1988 to 2007. Packinghouse workers wages rose a bit,but much less than ination. Yet the price of pork to consum-

ers went up 39%.

In 2005, the NFU noted that wheat farmers were getting ve

cents from each loaf of bread, the same amount as thirty years

earlier. The income of supermarket workers has been under

sharp attack. But the share of each loaf that goes to corporate

millers, bakers, and grocers rose from 38 cents to $1.35.

In 2004, which the NFU says was the second-worst year for

farming in history, the corporations living off the farmers had

their most protable year ever. The corporations are appropri-

ating every penny of the prots of farming indeed, more

than 100%, since farmers are unable to cover their costs from

farm-product sales.

The problem is market power

How do they get away with it?

The problem is market power, a Farmers Union document

explains. On one side are the huge transnationals with only

two or three competitors on the other side, individual

farmers competing in a global market against a billion other

farmers. In such conditions, agribusiness can set prices at

will whatever level best drains the farmers resources with-

out shutting down cultivation completely.

Farmers incomes can be stabilized in two ways, the NFU

points out:

(1) government subsidy programs that transfer money from

taxpayers and(2) programs to enable farmers to extract money from the

marketplace. The farmers` union strongly advises a focus on

enabling farmers to gain more market power.

If farmers are more powerful, they will be more protable,

the NFU concludes.


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Unity in marketing

Farmers have long sought to achieve market power in the

same way as workers by joining together in order to im-

pose a higher price for their product.Workers do this through unions, which establish market

power by bargaining collectively to set wage levels.

Farmers have sought to establish agencies under their

own or government management that exercise control over

the marketing of farm produce. The NFU points to the merits

of existing plans of this type, such as the Canadian Wheat

Board or Ontarios egg and milk marketing boards.

In recent years, such supply management plans have

come under government attack, and some have been shut

down. New marketing agreements of this type are banned by

the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA clears the

decks for agribusinesses to combine worldwide in giant trans-

national monopolies, while preventing the worlds atomized

and oppressed farmers from uniting in self-defense.

Imagine a law banning collective bargaining by unions, and

youll have some idea of the effect NAFTA has on farmers.

Hostile governments

Governments in Canada could ignore the NAFTA provisions,

citing the need for food products to conform to local envi-

ronmental and health regulations. But their policies cater to

transnational corporations and are hostile to smaller family-

based farms.

The Ontario government wants land and farming to be in a

few strong hands, Rae MacIntyre comments. Leang through

government documents, he reads out some examples of this

attitude:

A government leader says, I remain committed to working

with industry leaders. Raes comment: That means Car-

gill.

$1.5 billion in aid to livestock producers. Farmers will

not see a penny of that, he says. This aid goes only to farms


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that have been protable for three years running, which ex-

cludes almost all family farms.

Rae points to other government programs that exclude farm-

ers with off-farm income which again cuts out the vast ma-jority who need help the most.

He recalls the statement of Ontario Deputy Agriculture Min-

ister Frank Ingratta in 2004 that We could produce all the

product we need from 10,000 large highly mechanized farms

rather than the present 57,000. Despite Ingrattas later denial,

many farmers believe that the 10,000 farms goal corre-

sponds to current government policy.

Ofcial programs with praiseworthy goals are blocked by

bureaucratic methods. Several of the Grey County farmers

express frustration with government staffers who are long on

talk and promises but unwilling to take action. Meanwhile,

the government has been creative in thinking up new regula-

tions that make farming more difcult and shift inspection and

other costs onto the farmers` backs.

NFU program

The Farmers Union proposes an array of measures to help

working farmers resist corporate proteering. Among them:

Encourage supply management and take initiatives to im-

plement it internationally.

Establish price supports to guarantee that farmers receive

their cost of production.

Break the monopoly of corporate suppliers of seed, fertil-

izer, and other farm inputs by funding creation of farmer-

owned co-ops.

Ban corporate farming as well as corporate contracts that

dictate where farmers buy inputs and sell their product.Provide young people who want to farm with access to the

land through community land trusts and land banks; ease

the mountain of debt that now prevents sons and daughters

from taking over the family farm.

None of this needs to increase the cost of food to consumers,


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the NFU points out. Farmers receive so little of the food dol-

lar that the cost of increasing their share can be absorbed by

corporate processors and retailers without price increases.

Consumer awareness

In recent years, a new ally for working farmers has appeared:

the ecologically minded consumer. Many such consumers

now visit Grey County as tourists. Tourists have new tastes,

says NFU member Lillian Burgess. They prefer fresh local

food. When buying food, they ask, Where was it grown.

This new interest in local food has a Third World feel, Bur-gess says. Impoverished locals have to buy cheap, at the fran-

chised groceries, but tourists are willing to pay more.

The rise of food tourism reects concerns felt by a grow-

ing number of consumers about the impact of corporate meth-

ods on food supply:

Locally grown food is prized by many consumers as fresh-

er, tastier, and healthier; many seek direct contact with thefarmer.

Air-freighting food around the world when it can be grown

locally generates damaging and unnecessary carbon emis-

sions that contribute to global warming.

Agribusiness imposes industrial farming methods that are

unhealthy and unsustainable.

Environmental degradation and the diversion of food to fuel

are placing the security of world food supplies in jeopardy,

as has been eloquently explained by Fidel Castro and other

leaders of the Global South.

World outlook

According to a United Nations report, retail prices for food

worldwide in 2007 were 40% higher than in 2006. The price

of rice, wheat, and corn doubled. (Globe and Mail, March 29)

The long-term impact on farmers is uncertain. Those produc-

ing grain for the world market may benet. But farmers buy-

ing grain for fodder will pay more. The big winners will be


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the agribusiness giants. And the big losers are the worlds poor

many of them farmers.

The National Farmers Union has been alert to these threats.

On May 9, 2006, it wrote the United Nations, noting that theworld bodys own reports show a decline in the area of ar-

able and permanent crops since 2001. Grain stocks are the

lowest since 1975. In ve of the last six years, it notes, our

global population ate signicantly more grain than farmers

produced.

The NFU seeks to develop an international response to this

crisis as part of its participation in the international farmers

organization Va Campesina (Farmers Way).

Local-food initiative

Given the scope of the challenge, the Grey County NFU mem-

bers focus on the local-food issue is quite modest. It concedes

that for now, local farmers have been driven from mainstream

supermarkets and must focus instead on niche markets. Butwinning the chance to provide consumers with a local-food

alternative could be vital for these farmers survival.

Wayne Roberts, a Toronto-based ecologist active in efforts

to promote local food, points out how easily such a transition

could begin. Two simple actions by the Ontario government

would transform the situation, he says.

First, all government-funded institutions could buy local

and sustainable food: jails, hospitals, educational institutions,

seniors residences, and the like. [The government] would not

even have to change a law. Ontario farmers would need ve to

ten years to catch up with the demand. This is readily doable

and cost-effective; it just takes organizing to bring it to the at-

tention of the politicians.Roberts cites a recent victory in convincing the massive Uni-

versity of Toronto to go over to purchasing local and sustain-

able foods. Such efforts are coordinated through Local Food

Plus, which establishes criteria for sustainable food based on

positive social and ecological practices.


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Robertss second proposal concerns the right to farm. As

things stand, land is available to aspiring farmers only in the

form of large farms that sell for hundreds of thousands or even

millions of dollars. The provincial government could makeland available to those who wish to farm, he says.

The government owns plenty of idle agricultural land, he

says. They could lease it out in small packets for reason-

able prices, with special programs to encourage members of

minority groups and new immigrants who may wish to grow

products favored by their communities and neglected by con-

ventional supermarkets.

Labors stake

The local-food effort is helping to provide farmers with an

inuential potential ally the ecological movement. Farm-

ers deserve determined support from the labour movement as

well. Working people have a lot to gain from the availability

of local-food at grocery stores and from ecologically soundand sustainable agriculture.

It is also a question of solidarity. Working people who are

employed need to stand together with farmers, shers, truck-

ers, and other independent producers who are exploited by the

same corporations and face the same enemy.

Harvest of Injustice: The Oppression of

Migrant Workers on Canadian Farms

By Adriana Paz

Some say that nothing happens by chance. At the very least,

it was a fortunate accident that my rst job, when I arrived in

Canada from Bolivia three years ago, was in a tomato green-

house in South Delta, British Columbia one of the rst in

the province to request migrant farm workers from Mexico

under the federal Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

(SAWP). My job was to run from the ofce managers ofce


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to the greenhouse and back relaying information on workers

productivity levels.

My rst observation was that brown bodies are the pickers

and white bodies are the managers. I naively asked my bosswhy there are no Canadians picking tomatoes. He answered

me simply, Because this is not a job for them.

That was my rst lesson in Canadian social history. In B.C.,

most farm workers are and have long been immigrants of

colour, including recently a growing number of seasonal mi-

grants under SAWP and a related federal scheme, the Tem-

porary Foreign Workers Program. Battered by the whims of

global capital and local government policy, farm workers are

the most vulnerable part of the work force, facing extreme job

and economic insecurity.

According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

BC, most farm workers in the province are immigrants from

India, chiey women in their 50s and 60s who came to Cana-

da under the family reunication program. Lack of language

skills and the obligation to their families to repay money ad-

vanced for their immigration and settlement pressure them to

accept working conditions that Canadian workers nd unac-

ceptable.

Their plight is worsened by the Farm Labour Contractor

(FLC) system, unique to the agricultural sector. The FLCs actas coyotes or intermediaries between farm workers and green-

houses/farms, determining how workers will get to the job,

how long they will work, what they will earn, and so on. Obvi-

ously the FLCs do nothing to ensure respect for employment

standards and safety regulations, leading to all sort of viola-

tions while the provincial authorities close their eyes.

For generations, South Asians have toiled in the elds ofBritish Columbia under unsafe and exploitative conditions,

enduring low wages and long hours of hard work while creat-

ing massive prots for agrobusiness.

Although fully informed about the corrupt FLCs and their

blatant violations of employment and safety regulations, the


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provincial government decided in 2001/2002 to reduce en-

forcement. Then in 2003/2004 they excluded farm workers

from various provisions of the Employment Standards Act,

leaving this group of racialized labour even more vulnerableto hyperexploitation.

How to create a labour shortage

Since 2000, farm operators in B.C. have been complaining of a

shortage of labour to harvest their crops. Little science is need-

ed nd the cause. When wages are low, often less than the legal

minimum, and working conditions are substandard, workers areunwilling to work in agriculture if they have a choice.

The farm operators are of course passing on downwards the

immense pressures they face from the forces of globalization

and the power of agribusiness monopolies. Far from providing

protection against these proteers, the government, urged on

by the farm/greenhouse operators, has adopted policies that

have worsened the labour shortage.Nothing was done to raise farm labour wages or to increase

the supply of immigrant labour. On the contrary, their mea-

sures serve to make agricultural labour not only unattractive

but unlivable. To make matters worse, Citizenship and Im-

migration Canada in 2003 restricted the family reunication

program, reducing the traditional South Asian labour source

of those utilizing this program to immigrate to Canada.

Meanwhile the federal government is closing the door to per-

manent immigration of farm workers while steadily moving to-

wards a U.S-style policy based on temporary migration.

All this is of course the total opposite of the free market

policies that the government claims to support. In a free mar-

ket, when demand for something goes up, so should its price. Iftheres a labour shortage in Canadian agriculture, wages should

tend upwards until the supply of labour increases. By aggres-

sively expanding Temporary Worker Programs, the government

is manipulating market conditions to keep wages and working

conditions low in order to increase corporate prots.


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Government-imposed servitude

Ottawas seasonal agricultural workers program (SAWP) is an

old federal initiative that started in 1966 with Caribbean coun-

tries. Mexico and Guatemala were incorporated in the seven-ties. SAWP operates in Alberta, Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario,

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, sup-

plying 20% of seasonal farm jobs on vegetable, fruit, and to-

bacco farms and greenhouses. B.C. was incorporated in 2004.

Under the SAWP a farm worker comes under a temporary

work permit visa tied to one single employer for periods of up

to eight months. Before leaving the home country, the worker

must sign a contract with the employer specifying wages and

terms of employment in other words, sign away the right

while in Canada to seek better conditions. Those seeking per-

mits are not allowed to bargain collectively with their pro-

spective employer. Impoverished and dispossessed workers

abroad stand alone against the power of employer and govern-

ment. The employer is able to dictate contract terms.

Justicia/Justice for Migrant Workers-BC calls on Ottawa to

offer the migrant workers permanent status for them and

their families on their arrival in Canada. In fact, as things

stand, workers have no option to apply for permanent status.

They are sent home as soon as their contracts expire or

sooner, if they complain or raise concerns about poor workingor living conditions..

They take with them an evaluation form from their employ-

er, which must be given to the home government. At the end

of the season, employers ll an evaluation report indicating if

they would recall the workers for next season. A negative re-

port can result in suspension from the program. Workers also

report on their treatment by Canadian employers, but most ofthem avoid complaints for fear that this would be held against

them in reapplying for work in Canada.

In the Mexican case, the government requires that appli-

cants have less than grade three education, a farm-worker

background, and strong family ties factors believed likely


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to prevent them from establishing themselves in Canada as

undocumented workers.

Workers get little information on what to expect in Canada.

Once here, they start at or near minimum wage, exposed tolong shifts of hard labour (up to 12-16 hour days in peak sea-

son). They receive no overtime pay, no paid holidays, some-

times no weekends, and no vacation pay. They are also sub-

jected to unfair paycheck deductions for social benets such

as Unemployment Insurance and Canadian Pension Plan that

they can never receive because of their temporary status.

The SAWP program does not provide a path to regulariza-

tion of status. Migrant labourers work here for years as mi-

grants, coming and going yearly, sometimes for their entire

work life. They develop ties here and establish themselves

up to a certain point, but are never able to settle with their

families. This creates a pattern of extended and painful family

separation. Children grow up without fathers, while men here

establish separate lives, and the fabrics of relationships and

communities are strained.

Immigrant-based community grassroots organizations, pro-

gressive faith groups, and the labour movement point out that

such temporary worker programs depress standards for all work-

ers in Canada. The migrant-worker programs are yet another

tactic of the divide and conquer strategy that aims to divideand fracture the working class. It encourages a perception that

migrant workers threaten the jobs and employment standards

of the local population, when in fact it is the migrant-labour

programs not the workers that threaten us all.

How to create a labour surplus

The rural economy of Mexico has been devastated in recentyears by the provisions of the North American Free Trade

Agreement. This is entirely intentional, reecting NAFTAs

goal of reshaping Mexicos economy in line with the needs

of mainly U.S. corporate interests, while enriching the notori-

ously corrupt Mexican ruling class.


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25

NAFTA and related policies deepen economic distress in

Mexico where, according to the World Bank, 50% live in pov-

erty and 15% in extreme poverty about 15 million Mexi-

cans struggling to fend off starvation. Meanwhile, Mexico,one of the worlds most unequal and unjust countries, boasts

more new billionaires than Canada, including the richest man

on earth, Carlos Slim.

The economic collapse of the Mexican countryside has cre-

ated waves of migrants seeking a future in Mexicos large cit-

ies and in the U.S. It is estimated there could be as many as

12 million undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. Half a million

brave the dangerous journey north every year. About 3,000 die

each year in the attempt, mostly from exposure while crossing

the unforgiving deserts of the U.S. Southwest. The migrants

remittances back home are now Mexicos largest source of

foreign revenue, about $25 billion annually.

SAWP and other temporary worker programs take advantage

of the huge surplus of cheap labour in Mexico that NAFTA

helped to create. Through temporary worker programs, gov-

ernments of both Mexico and Canada aim to manage the ow

of migrants to the North for the benet of local business elites,

while stripping workers of rights and liberties.

The result is to create in this country an underclass of work-

ers, an underclass of human beings stamped with the labelsof foreign, undocumented, unskilled, and temporary.

Meanwhile it relieves the Mexican government of responsi-

bility to ensure healthy rural and urban development through-

out the country.

The need to organize

The creation of this oppressed migrant workforce must be an-swered by a migrant labour movement with its feet and heart

in the countries of both origin and destination, one that seeks

real and lasting solutions to the migrant workers problems.

This movement must be based on grassroots organizing initia-

tives that empower workers to lead their own struggle. Real


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changes happen only when those most affected, those who suf-

fer the most, are at the forefront of the struggle. If this is not

the case, changes if any will be supercial and short-lived.

The Justicia/Justice for Migrant Workers collective sees itsmandate as assisting those most affected the migrant work-

ers in stepping to the fore and consolidating their position

and participation in the movement. We help workers organize

in an effective manner, avoiding possible risk of repatriation

and seeking to meet their immediate and long-term needs.

We expose migrant workers conditions and apply pressure

through the media, while accompanying the workers process

of raising consciousness, and developing skills and tools drawn

from their own analysis of their condition and situation. We

seek to help create different types of support systems legal,

political, and moral within the community to overcome the

numerous barriers that silence migrant workers.

In B.C., unlike other provinces in the east, migrant farm

workers are allowed to unionize. In some cases, unions have

sought to respond to their plight, as with regard to the tempo-

rary workers employed in B.C. on the Richmond-Vancouver

rapid transit line and the Golden Ears Bridge over the Fraser

River. The United Food and Commercial Workers operate

Migrant Support Centers in Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec, and

recently B.C. Currently it is ghting for the right to representthese workers in Manitoba and Quebec.

On the whole, however, efforts by the trade union move-

ment to defend these workers have been sporadic, and their

character raises legitimate concerns.

In addition, it must be asked whether Canadas unions, with

their present hierarchical and primarily white leadership struc-

tures, can effectively represent migrant workers and servetheir interests. Are unions long-term allies of migrant work-

ers, supporting their struggle not only here but in their country

of origin, where the root causes are found that forced them

to migrate? Should an independent migrant workers union be

formed to better represent their interests by exercising their


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skills and building on their organizing culture and historical

backgrounds?

What is certain is that regardless of the structure or model,

the most affected ones migrant workers and migrants ofcolour should represent themselves. Only this will counter-

act their historical background of marginalization. Otherwise

systemic patterns of charity and paternalism will be perpetu-

ated, making token gestures to those most affected the mi-

grant workers without changing the structures that deter-

mine their fate.

Alliances of migrant workers with other sectors, inside and

outside the labour movement, should address systemic issues,

such as the root causes of migration, structural and systemic

racism in immigration policies and hiring systems, and so on.

There are ways unions can support migrant workers other than

merely representing or leading their struggle.

Support and solidarity can be expressed through respecting,

facilitating, and encouraging migrant workers self-organiza-

tion instead of speaking for them and having others doing the

work for them. Respect and support is also needed for grass-

roots organizing efforts to develop leadership and capacity

within community-based organizations. This can help grass-

roots organizers and migrant workers develop the tools need-

ed for their struggle for justice and dignity.After my rst Canadian social history lesson in the tomato

greenhouse three years ago, many more followed. Undoubt-

edly, the most powerful and hopeful lessons came from the

migrant farm workers themselves, who through the years have

been resisting with admirable courage and dignity their pa-

trones (bosses), both in their farms and the consular ofces,

where ofcials are often from the employers side. They dothis sometimes silently and sometimes loudly, accompanied

by external supporters or just by themselves. They demand the

right to be human beings, not just the economic units that

global capital needs them to be.


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Food Crisis: World Hunger, Agribusiness

and the Food Sovereignty Alternative.

by Ian Angus. A Marxist analysis ofthe worldwide food and farm crisis.

Includes statements by Fidel Castro, La

Via Campesina and the Nyeleni Food

Sovereignty Conference

Reading from the left

Fidel Castro on Global Warming, Biofuels

and World Hunger. It hurts to think that 10billion tons of fossil fuel is consumed every

year. This means that each year we waste what

it took nature one million years to create.

Venezuela Eyewitness

by Suzanne Weiss and John Riddell.

Canadian socialists report on Venezuelas

achievements and the challenges facing the

Bolivarian Revolution today.

These pamphlets and more are

available online at

Riddell, John & Adriana Paz 2009 'La via Campesina-- Farmers North and South Confront Agribusiness'...

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Transcript of Riddell, John & Adriana Paz 2009 'La via Campesina-- Farmers North and South Confront Agribusiness'...